As a creative agency, looks do matter - a lot. Our brand, website, and social channels are all reflections of what we can do for our clients, and none of those things were accurately demonstrating our capabilities. We had failed to develop a meaningful design language, brand voice, or content strategy for ourselves - exactly the services we insist our clients need. And as with any business, though we made it a decent ways without these things, we had reached the point where our appearance was keeping us from growing any further.

As 2021 was starting to reach an end, we realized we were never going to find time outside client work to rebrand. Instead, we had to become our own client, and make the time. So, we've spent the past few months rebranding ourselves, and now you're seeing the result. It's been a difficult, sometimes painful process, but we're pretty proud of the outcome. We'll get technical about each aspect of the rebrand soon, but for anyone curious, today we're doing one big rundown of the whole damn thing. Let's start with the logo.

Logo + Identity

It all started as a quick refresh. Though we wouldn't call it a simple change, an update to our identity system felt overdue and easy enough to accomplish. We had a straightforward goal: make something more current while retaining the brand recognition we've developed so far. The first step was cleaning up our existing logo to create a sleeker and more "designed," but still recognizable, version.

Inevitably, we next had to reevaluate color - our original red was chosen with the goal of pulling attention as an agency fresh on the scene, but it no longer served our new goal of communicating our approachable, creative nature. Without diving too deep into ~color theory~ the negative connotations associated with red felt like they were weighing down our refreshed logo. We started over with a black and white palette, something elegant, minimalist, and timeless, and then debated on an accent color, going back and forth between green (rejuvenation) and blue (potential). We settled on a blend: teal. It mixed the two top contending colors, contrasted playfully with the B&W, and set us apart from other agencies in the area. Mostly we just think it looks cool.

So, we had the beginnings of a new brand language. At that point, we could ignore the website no longer.

The Website

Our previous website was created in 2017, and never touched again. Following the logo and brand language, the website became our highest priority. And it wasn't simply a mission to redesign what was preexisting, but to redefine who and what our agency was. We had to develop mission and vision statements, clarify our roster of services, determine our strengths and personality, and discover what else we had to offer.

It was at this point we made the decision to change our company name from Axim Design to Axim Creative, which we felt better described what we do here. We're not just a design agency, production company, or marketers, but all of those things, tied together under the heading of marketing and brand-building strategies. Everything we do here is first and foremost a creative endeavor, and the updated company name now reflects that.

With the new URL in place, we delved deep into the slow process of custom web development, generating a whole site's worth of content to showcase ourselves, our work, and our goals. As launch started to become more of a reality, there was one last piece of the puzzle to figure out: what were we going to post?

Internal Content

It quickly became clear that we hadn't just taken ourselves on as a one-off client with this rebrand; we were on retainer. We weren't about to repeat our former mistake of creating a website then leaving it to die. Instead, we needed a strategy for ongoing content development and sharing, for both web and social media (so people might actually visit the website we worked so hard to make).

So that's where we are now: building out a content calendar of various internal insights, conversations, behind the scenes, and whatever else we think is worth sharing. We're in it for the long haul, and we hope you'll stick around to see what we come up with.